This Tech Makes Perishable Food Last Months Without a Fridge
upstart writes in with an IRC submission:
This tech makes perishable food last months without a fridge:
In the U.S., households throw out around 30 million tons of food each year-nearly twice as much as the produce wasted on farms. In some other parts of the world, the situation flips: Because of a lack of infrastructure and unreliable electricity, food often can't be refrigerated, and it rots before it can be sold to consumers.
But new technology could help eliminate the need for cold storage. Farther Farms, a startup based in upstate New York, developed a new type of pasteurization that makes food last longer, so perishable food can sit on a shelf instead of in a fridge. As a proof of concept, the company made packaged french fries-food that would normally be sold frozen-that can sit at room temperature for 90 days before it's eaten. Even better: The process doesn't use artificial preservatives.
[...] When something like milk is pasteurized, it's quickly heated using steam to kill pathogens. The new process uses carbon dioxide instead. The food is packed in proprietary packaging, then processed with high-pressure ("supercritical") CO2, at a moderately high temperature, which the company's studies have found inactivates microorganisms and enzymatic activity. At scale, the CO2 can be used in a closed loop and captured at the end of the day to reuse in the system the next day.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.